Makeup Heiresses Make Their MarkIn This Family, Turning Heads Is Not Enough
By BEE-SHYUAN CHANG

Who are those girls?

That was the buzz at many of the top shows during New York Fashion Week last month, as two — and then three — young, tall, blond, French-speaking, dramatically dressed stunners took their places in the coveted front rows at shows including Thakoon, Rodarte and Michael Kors. Even many fashion veterans said they had never seen them before.

Mystery solved. They are Virginie, Claire and Jenna Courtin-Clarins, granddaughters of Jacques Courtin-Clarins, who founded the Clarins skin-care company. Virginie, 25, and Claire, 23, are sisters and Jenna, 24, is a cousin.

Their identities were soon established by some of the more dogged fashion and gossip Web sites, including papermag.com and guestofaguest.com. Reported one blogger for the latter: “Frustratingly little is available on the Clarins heiresses this side of the Internet, but they are a must-watch at the shows this fashion week as buzz continues to generate around them.”

Soon, word began to circulate that they had been spotted early on by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, who not only helped them get prime seating at some of the shows, but who planned to feature them in a future issue. (The three are expected to attend the Costume Institute gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in May, an event co-chaired by Ms. Wintour.)

During Fashion Week, it would have been hard for anyone not to notice the three: Virginie donned a blazing-red pantsuit one day while Claire showed up in a Thierry Mugler white virgin wool jacket with voluminous marbled fox fur sleeves on another day.

“The starting point was Claire’s fresh and angel-like overall style,” Nicola Formichetti, Thierry Mugler’s creative director, said of the attention-getting piece. “She keeps her look quite pure but still daring for new shapes and volumes.”

(Clarins has owned the Mugler name since 1997. Mr. Formichetti’s fall collection was shown in Paris on Wednesday.)

As New York Fashion Week progressed and the paparazzi took notice of the three women as well, speculation began to build that they may be the next Miller Girls, the sun-kissed, fine-boned spawn of Robert Miller, the Duty Free Shoppers billionaire, and his Ecuadorean wife, Chantal. The Miller sisters all went on to acquire famous last names and titles — Pia Getty; Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece; and Alexandra Von Furstenberg — as they made their mark on New York society in the 1990s.

The Courtin-Clarins sisters proved to be avid fashion fans during their debut at the shows. Virginie said “some of the young New York designers, Proenza Schouler, Alexander Wang, Phillip Lim” were among her favorites.

But Virginie and Claire, whose father, Christian Courtin-Clarins, is chairman of the private company, came from Paris for more than a front-row tour. The trip’s main purpose was to meet with Lauren Bush to further their collaboration: Clarins recently signed on with Ms. Bush’s Feed Projects as a beauty partner. In February, the partnership introduced a Feed cosmetics bag filled with Clarins products at Colette, a shop in Paris; the bag will be available at Nordstrom stores in July.

“The girls are so smart and grounded, and they’re part of this family who are normal, hard-working people,” Ms. Bush said in a telephone interview. “I met their dad in France a few weeks prior at the Clarins headquarters, and he’s so proud of his daughters. He talked about collaborating and how it makes sense for the family.”

Virginie elaborated in an e-mail: “Being charitable has always been the philosophy. My grandfather was my mentor. He always told us to put ourselves in others’ shoes to understand everything, in professional and personal life.”

Jenna, a college student, is a daughter of Dr. Olivier Courtin-Clarins, who is Christian’s brother and the managing director of the company. She visited New York for a two-day break from her studies. Her twin sister, Prisca — yes, there’s another Courtin-Clarins — was too tethered to the chain of nail salons she has in Paris to join her relatives in New York.

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What do I think about the way most people dress? Most people are not something one thinks about... - Diana VreelandTwitter / Tumblr

Two very lovely girls with a great last name. I think prefer Virginie, the shorter one, to Claire style wise simply because she seems to be more refined, whereas Claire is more youthful and experiemental.